Introduction

Having spent 10 years putting together this material in sum, Smith's 1776 Wealth of Nations had an enourmous impact among the rising bourgeois of Europe and the freshly independent United States of America.

The institutions of Fuedalism, largely still surviving throughout Europe in 1776, placed a variety of restrictions and impedements on the rising industrial bourgeoisie  US revolutionists had ardently broken from it in the same year. Smith's work provided the theoretical cannon shot for the chorus of growing bourgeois to strike back against Fuedalist bureacracy and philsophy; giving them a philosophical manifesto behind which to stand, and an idealised government towards which to fight for. Smith was convinced that Fuedalism's controls over the further development of Europe's economies would strangle industrial growth; and explained that the only correct way to practice economics was to do it by the dictates of capitalism, not the now defunct fuedalism.

This work has been transcribed from the revised fifth edition, the last print made in Adam Smith's lifetime. Footnotes may not be completely transcribed; the edition used to transcribe this work had the editor's footnotes integrated without any differential marking, making any distinguishing between the authors' and editors' notes nearly impossible. Note that the word "On" was used in place of the old-english word "Of" in Chapter beginnings.